


-Unnamed-

by BlackBirdAolen



Category: Castlevania Lords of Shadow と 宿命の魔鏡 | Castlevania: Lords of Shadow & Mirror of Fate, Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: AU, Corporate Espionage, Cybernetics, Gen, Lots of Violence in the Future, Night city, Possibly Confounding Timeline, alternative universe, mega crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:34:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29046948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: (Work Title will be subject to change.)A city like no other. A powder keg of everyone wanting some more power, some more Eddies, some more thrill out of a manic dream. And souls from every corner of the mind coming together in a web of ambitions that threatens the possibly most delicate power balance of this dirty, glorious piece of mega architecture.
Kudos: 2





	-Unnamed-

**Author's Note:**

> When a late night thought and the absolute need to get my thoughts away from everyday life conspire and produce something... it might just result in this.
> 
> This will be a ginormous, possibly "I way overdid it" project. An AU for Cyberpunk 2077. Expect more characters to show up. Expect insanity levels to rise.
> 
> Also, probably, this might be the most ambitious thing I will tackle for the foreseeable future. After having 2020 being a complete, and somewhat involuntary hiatus (despite plenty of opportunity), it is time to return with a bang.

“Evening, Jensen.”

“Evening.”

Alucard smirked and took his position next to Jensen in the elevator, before they proceeded to the first underground level of Vestra Incorporated. Another night, another shift of closely watching the car park - of all places - to make sure no one was starting shit. They hadn’t lied when they had warned him against moving into Night City without being a born citizen to this seething cauldron, but the thought of opportunities had overridden anything else. Well, six months into his gig, and Alucard was already regretting quite some things. Here, far way from his turf, no one cared that he had built a persona around himself that made him one of the rulers of the night. Here? He was barely good enough to be a simple goon at an up and coming corporation, and every night, he made sure that no one just waltzed into the car park and turned one of the luxurious rides down here into a mobile claymore.

The only one who moderately broke up the monotony of the job, even if he himself was mono-syllabic at times, was Adam Jensen. Beneath the stoic surface, though, Alucard had found someone with quick wit and the levelheaded approach needed when working in Night City’s biggest crime hot-spots. And, well, to work in the same gray concrete hell hole each and every day. But not much longer. They had a plan to go forward with a much more exciting slice of life, even with full knowledge that it could spectacularly backfire at any time. But it was better than languishing in an ever monotonous occupation. At least, as far as Alucard was concerned. He never had gotten Jensen’s reasons for planning to give Vestra the middle finger, but he supposed that it wasn’t too important. As long as they could get along reasonably well, then all was well.

“You been to Victor’s yet?” Alucard stepped out of the elevator behind Adam, giving the car park only the most cursory of glances. At shift change, nothing big had been announced, and it had been generally quiet during most of the last week. That wasn’t to say that something was definitely up or that anything would happen. “At least looks like it.”

“Mhm.” Adam turned his head far enough so Alucard could catch a glimpse of a slightly reddened spot around the black implants around his eyes. Alucard had been sorely tempted to get such shades himself, but ultimately had decided against it. He liked his own look with black scleras and yellow irises, though he soon had noticed that it wasn’t all that unusual in Night City. “Upgrade’s a bit of a bitch to handle. My eyes and my shades still need to establish proper communications.” The smallest of sarcastic smiles made Adam’s mouth twitch. “Never thought I’d have to say something like that.”

“Sounds like fun.”

They settled in for their shift, but again, nothing much was to be expected. The only time they had done anything of note so far was when one of the cars had suffered a rather suspicious oil spill, which down the line had resulted in a controlled explosion. That was considered a handshake in the world of mega corporations, as far as Alucard had learned. Not that he had any intentions of learning more about the finer nuances in this whole messed up swamp. He wanted to live on the fringe and know enough to dodge the unwarranted attention. Other than that, he was much more interested in getting a whole bunch of Eddies.

“Say. How big is your plan?” This was not the first time that Adam questioned their whole plan, and Alucard couldn’t blame him at all. Calling this a risk was an understatement. They didn’t warn you that leaving Night City was virtually impossible without ending up in a body bag for no reason.

“That is the thing. I don’t want a big plan. I don’t want a big, public eye on me. Which, of course. How. In this city.” Alucard licked along his teeth. The implants he had gotten a whole while back finally weren’t acting up randomly and pierced his tongue at the most inconvenient time. They truthfully were more for show than anything else. But show. That was a big thing here. “I want for me to have a more comfortable life and one with more excitement. Which probably is a death sentence to wish for in Night City, and especially within a mega corp. How wouldn’t it be.”

It was hard to read Adam’s face at times. Alucard had asked him before if any of the implants had actually disabled some of his facial nerves, to which Adam had stared at him with such a stern glare that he actually had felt like being watched by an overwhelmingly stronger predator. A sensation he had not liked in the least. Right now, Adam showed mild interest, but also mild amusement. Interestingly, there was no sign that he was somehow annoyed or about to ream him for being so thoughtless. No, there was just this neutral, mildly interested approach.

“So you’ve been going bonkers with the thought of just being stuck here for the rest of our natural lives. Is that it?”

“It’s not any different from my usual answer, so I guess this is exactly it.”

Adam nodded slowly, then reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out what at first might have been mistaken for an old thumbdrive or something similar. Those actually still could show up in the remotest corner of the badlands, where it carried a certain degree of advantage to use practically prehistoric tech. But in this case, it was a vape that was shaped exactly like a thumbdrive. Alucard had seen Adam smoke before. There had been cigarettes for some time, but he had changed to vaping, which was a bit easier on his cybernetics. As far as he knew, Adam was about 80 percent tech by now. Made it increasingly more interesting to determine how much of him was still human.

“So tonight is the last night.” Adam took a pull after the vape had warmed up and then expelled a cloud of slightly purple tinges smoke that made it look like they had entered one of the countless nightclubs of Night City. It was a welcome splash of color amidst the gray and dark metallics of the underground facility. “Our replacements are trained enough, so… The only difference between them and us is our experience, really.”

“You mean our bitterness and disinterested attitude towards our soon-to-be-former occupation.” That elicited a small smile from Adam, which in turn made Alucard smirk. “Still cute that they were impressed with your cyberware. I mean, from what I have seen so far, it is certainly not unusual to have your limbs in a different color than your natural skin tone. And still?”

“Maybe they just have a better lump of gray matter between their ears than whatever passes for a neuronal center that sits between your ears”, Adam countered dryly. Then, another smirk. “They know the good stuff when they see the good stuff. Even if it is pretty nostalgic to still wear Sarif stuff.”

“You mean telling how old you are.”

“I would like to call it ‘seasoned’.”

Alucard laughed and then sighed quietly, thinking about how to proceed further. He had secured a flat he liked and had offered Adam to move in with him, in case anything bad should happen. Adam had filed it away under something he “would consider, but not wish upon” Alucard, which was one way of saying that Adam didn’t appreciate unrequested roommates at any time of day or under any circumstances. He could understand, as, from what Alucard knew, Adam Jensen had to be somewhere in his mid fourties, but he could kick his sorry ass to the curb in about five seconds flat. Those Sarif implants were still as good as new even after such a long time, which either spoke to the outstanding quality of them to still be functional after around 20 years or to a lot of midday visits to Victor for much needed maintenance and a ton of Eddies dumped into repairing his prosthetic arms and legs.

“I won’t miss it here, but I have to say, there is something about just sitting in the middle of the sick, vibrating heart of Night City.” Alucard was aware that he almost sounded nostalgic for Night City, which in and of itself was weird in his own eyes. He had been here all of half a year, but he already had been utterly charmed by the sheer chaos of it all. “In the middle of corporate suits who couldn’t care less about you one way or another.”

“Still paid off to never get on their bad sides”, Adam stated flatly. That was something Alucard probably would hear about for the rest of his life, but it was completely justified. He had almost managed to get himself into deep shit with Vestra Incorporated a little less than a month ago, over something that had seemed pretty insignificant to him, but what Adam had explained to him to be a big fucking deal indeed. “Though I will say, I still don’t know why I want to go along with your braindead scheme. Maybe because it is better than working a soulless job.”

“And they claim you can’t escape the corporate life with your soul intact.” Alucard looked at himself in the side mirror of one of the expensive cares, then reconsidered: “I take that back. My soul definitely had been more than just a bit scuffed in the whole deal of it. And we are just the super low goons of the corp.”

“Bingo.” Adam took one last draw and then put away the vape, not without expelling another almighty cloud and then, as soon as Alucard could make out enough of his head, nodding towards a blue super car one of the higher ups had purchased just three days ago. “Exciting last day on the job. This one looks fucky.”

Alucard lifted an eyebrow, but walked over to the car, stopped about thirty feet away from it and got on his hands and knees, then laid flat on the ground and gazed into the small gap between car and floor. To his surprise, or more precisely utter lack of surprise, he could just so make out a flash of metal that definitely didn’t look like it belonged there. He fumbled for a flashlight and switched it on on the weakest beam, then switched through his different options on his optics, until he had the correct contrast to more easily make out what in the absolute fuck was happening under that car.

“That is an old—fashioned approach. But still an approach that is nasty enough.” It was hard to make out, but someone definitely had stuck an explosive package with some remote sensor under that car. “Sends a message, though. Either this someone is all for a good, old tradition, from way back when, or. And this might sound like just a bit of a reach”, Alucard continued, knowing full well Adam would appreciate the dry humor. “Or they are out to make a statement that can’t be confused for anything else.”

“Knowing Night City, it’s a bit of column A, a bit of column B, and then a big chunk of column C for which we lack both clearance and a heaping pile of context which outsiders just don’t get.”

To that, Alucard had nothing to add, because it was painfully true. This also meant, though, that they had to call in the specialists. Vestra Incorporated was crazy enough to try and start up in Night City as it’s operational center, despite there already being enough mega corporations fighting over what qualified a tumor of civilization, but they weren’t near suicidal enough to trust the NCPD or any of the other mega corps to solve their problems without this going sideways for them in some bizarre and painfully damaging way.

But with that, their night shift was pretty much done, because the underground facility would be locked down and anyone with insufficient clearance immediately sent away. It was with mixed feelings that Alucard returned every piece of equipment to his shift supervisor (which was barely anything at all) and then waited a dizzying, disorienting minute until his cybernetics adjusted to no longer having access to Vestra’s network and having some programs removed and utterly shredded to unreadable garbage, before he and Adam could leave the building. There was no send-off, not that there had been anything planned of that sort. Vestra was still expanding, but had so little turnover that it was a darn wonder they even acknowledged there was a possibility someone could quit.

“Not how I pictured my employment to end.” Adam sighed quietly and readjusted his new looking leather jacket, which, Alucard had to admit, looked damn good on Adam. As for himself, he made due with a jacket that was scuffed to shit and looked like it should be falling apart and was for some reason still held together by some pieces of string.

“I pretty much expected that to happen.” Alucard cast one last look back at the building. A strange gut feeling told him that this was just the beginning of something, and it could end up with them being dragged back into it, even if they were to completely detach themselves from this part of their lives. “Don’t like it either way, though. There’s competing on the market, and then there’s using those methods. That’s just… It reeks of something really fucking unpleasant.”

“Only one way to find out what it will be.” Adam’s shades slid in front of his eyes, not for the last time eliciting a small sting of envy bubbling up at it. “If we still don’t hear anything about it in half a year, we’re probably clear. If we do, we better make sure we get through it without losing every last Eddy.”

“Either way, this is the start of our chance to make a real nice name for ourselves.”

If he had known what he was getting himself into at this point, Alucard wasn’t sure if he had actually done it. But all things considered, it was probably the best and wildest ride that Night City could ever offer him.


End file.
